How Space Cadet pinball won the Windows desktop

But there was something different about Space Cadet. It wasn’t a real pinball game, after all; it’s right there in its full and clunkily corporate name: 3D Pinball for Windows–Space Cadet. It was a virtual table designed from scratch by a small, plucky development company to show off the power and accessibility of Microsoft’s most ambitious operating system yet: Windows 95. It was a rush job, and then a success, and then it disappeared with little fanfare, remembered in remixed music and a Linux port, and after a prodding, with lit-up eyes and the grin of a childhood memory shaken loose—“Oh yeah! I loved that game!”